Baltimore Sun fires reporters during baseball game

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The headline says it all, and adds a nasty twist to this week’s purge at The Sun in Baltimore. Here’s part of The Guardian’s report on how the Tribune-owned Sun did the deed:

The group, consisting of three writers and a photographer, were told the news as they reported back from a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Los Angeles Angels in a move that was documented by a fellow reporter online.

“Tough times in the newspaper biz,” wrote the OC Register’s Bill Plunkett as an aside during his inning-by-inning update from the game. “Two writers for the Baltimore Sun in the press box here got the news – by phone, during the game – that they had been laid off in the latest round of cost-cutting. Stay classy, Baltimore Sun management.”

Plunkett subsequently updated his comments, adding that another reporter and a photographer had also been axed in the same way.

I’ve never been a sportwriter (with two or three notably poor exceptions in my 15 years in journalism), but… how many reporters does a newspaper need at a minimum to cover a baseball game? (The Wall Street Journal discovered last month: not as many as we have) It’s the same question I had when I discovered that The Boston Globe — which could learn whether it will live or die by tonight — has five science reporters. I like it when the job market I work in has lots of places for me to do what I do, but… five science reporters?

Is it possible that those reporters might be put to better use hitting the streets and covering the local news that these papers claim they excel in, now that their dreams of being international reporting superstars are dead? I welcome your abuse comments.

PS – I heard from a source at the paper that The Sun has a new social networks editor, at the same time they’re ditching local news editors. Good times!

No one reads the Baltimore Sun anyway. They have a hard time giving it away, seriously. Their coverage of everything is so ridiculously biased, it’s not worth even reading. Even their own constituents aren’t interested in more of the same.